Financial tracking

This article on credit card debt self-help groups is interesting, and also, incredibly hilarious in parts:

Last month, 26-year-old accountant Shawanda Greene says she joined "Girls Just Wanna Have Funds," a recently created Washington, D.C., support group of mostly younger women. Ms. Greene's goal: to figure out why, despite an annual salary of $82,000, she had only $54 in her savings account.

The Girls kicked into action, encouraging Ms. Greene to track her spending. While some of her income was going to pay down debt, including $14,500 in student loans, Ms. Greene realized she was also spending too much on extras, like her $400 Cole Haan boots and her hungry boyfriend, who she says would consume much of her food when he came over. "Things were particularly bad when it came to produce," she says. "He'd eat like four tangerines at once....Sometimes I'd cut up some watermelon, pineapple and strawberries. He'd eat a good 75% of that."

So, Ms. Greene says she dumped him, after frequent arguments about grocery bills and other money matters. The former boyfriend, a 36-year-old engineer named Lindon Fairweather, says he shared grocery costs but acknowledges he did munch a lot of fruit at Ms. Greene's. "I'll eat more than four tangerines, absolutely....I can eat 18 mangoes in two days," he says. "That's just me."

I'm very much enjoying picturing the expression on his face when a reporter from the Wall Street Journal called him to check on his daily fruit consumption. But he must be a very easygoing man. If my boyfriend was counting the tangerines I consumed at his house--and putting them in the same mental basket as $400 shoes--he wouldn't have to worry about breaking up with me. I'd take care of the problem for him.